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directing, the art of leading dramatic performances on the stage or in films. The modern theatrical director is in complete charge of all the artistic aspects of a dramatic presentation.
It is the director's first task to discover a central mood or idea in the text of the play to be performed that will serve as a unifying determinant for the interpretation of individual scenes and characters. Then he or she must work out the movement of the actors on stage and the pacing of each line and scene. Finally, the director helps plan the lighting, scenery, sound effects, and musical accompaniment for the production. All the director's efforts are aimed at creating a fully unified aesthetic experience. For information on motion picture directing, see motion pictures motion pictures, movie-making as an art and an industry, including its production techniques, its creative artists, and the distribution and exhibition of its products (see also motion picture photography; Motion Picture Cameras under camera). Evolution of Modern DirectingDirecting in some form has always existed in the theater. In ancient Greece playwrights trained their chorus and actors, and medieval religious plays had either individual or group directors. During later centuries the stage manager was the forerunner of the director. In England, Madame Vestris Vestris, Lucia Elizabeth (Bartolozzi) , 1797–1856, English actress and manager, the first woman to be a lessee of a theater. The daughter of a music and fencing teacher, she made an unsuccessful marriage at 16 to Armand Vestris, her ballet master. Approaches to DirectingThe beginning of modern directing is commonly associated with the Meiningen Players Meiningen Players, German theatrical company that toured Europe from 1874 to 1890. The group, inspiring theatrical reforms wherever it performed, was a major influence in the movement toward modern theater. Almost as soon as realism gained ascendancy, various antirealistic theatrical movements developed, beginning with Paul Fort's Théâtre d'Art (1890). The theories of Adolphe Appia Appia, Adolphe , 1862–1928, Swiss theorist of modern stage lighting and décor. In interpreting Wagner's ideas in scenic designs for his operas, Appia rejected painted scenery for the three-dimensional set; he felt that shade was as necessary as light to In addition to producing increased artistic possibilities for directors, the rise of antirealism made the director's practical task of coordinating scene design, lighting, and acting even more essential. A director who experimented successfully with both realism and antirealism was the German Max Reinhardt Reinhardt, Max, 1873–1943, Austrian theatrical producer and director, originally named Max Goldmann. After acting under Otto Brahm at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, he managed (1902–5) his own theater, where he produced more than 50 plays. During the 1920s there were several important antirealist directors working in Germany and the Soviet Union, notably Vsevolod Meyerhold Meyerhold, Vsevolod , 1874–1940?, Russian theatrical director and producer. Meyerhold led the revolt against naturalism in the Russian theater. Working with the Moscow Art Theatre, he experimented with his own directing ideas until the outbreak of the During the 19th and early 20th cent., the American theater was dominated by directors specializing in elaborate surface realism, with David Belasco Belasco, David , 1853–1931, American theatrical manager and producer, b. San Francisco. He was actively connected with the theater from his youth, and while associated with Dion Boucicault in Virginia City, Nev., he was first exposed to scenic realism. During the 1950s and 60s the emergence of the theater of the absurd and the theater of cruelty granted directors more scope than ever. Many directors, among them Peter Brook Brook, Peter, 1925–, English theatrical director, b. London. An innovative, unconventional, and controversial figure, Brook mounts energetic productions in which the entire stage is utilized and realistic sets are banished in favor of bold, abstract, and The director was commonly of prime importance in the theatrical productions of the late 20th cent. In the Brooks tradition, a number of directors, including America's Peter Sellars, Germany's Peter Stein, France's Ariane Mnouchine, and Poland's Tadeusz Kantor, put their individual and innovative creative stamps on classical and contemporary works. A wide range of approaches and preoccupations characterized late 20th-century directors, including the social concerns of such figures as Brazil's Augusto Boal and Russia's Lev Dodin; the experimentalism of such writer-directors as America's Robert Wilson Wilson, Robert, 1941–, dramatist, director, and designer, b. Waco, Tex. He began his arts career as a painter. A leading figure in postmodern theater since 1963, when he arrived in New York City, he has created lengthy, often controversial multimedia events BibliographySee E. G. Craig, The Art of the Theatre (1905) and Towards a New Theatre (1913); C. Stanislavsky, My Life in Art (1948); N. Marshall, The Producer and the Play (2d ed. 1962); T. Cole and H. K. Chinov, ed., Directors on Directing (1963); H. Clurman, On Directing (1972); E. Braun, The Director and the Stage (1982); W. Bell, Sense of Direction (1984); A. Bartow, The Dirctor's Voice (1988); D. Bradby and D. Williams, Directors' Theatre (1988); L. E. Catron, The Director's Vision (1989); A. Dean, The Fundamentals of Play Directing (5th ed. 1989); W. J. Robert, Directing in the Theatre (2d ed. 1993); J. W. Frick and S. M. Vallillo, ed., Theatrical Directors (1994); J. Luere and S. Berger, ed., Playwright vs. Director (1994); M. M. Delgado and P. Heritage, ed., In Contact with the Gods?: Directors Talk Theatre (1997). directingArt of coordinating and controlling all elements in the staging of a play or making of a film. Until the late 19th century, a theatrical director was usually the play's leading actor or the company's actor-manager. Today's stage director combines elements such as actors, decor, costumes, and lighting to shape an imaginative interpretation of the playwright's script. The director must understand the art of acting and provide guidance for the actors. The director also composes the “stage pictures,” the shifting arrangements of the actors and other elements on the stage. The film director combines the theatrical director's responsibilities with the technical functions of cinematography, editing, and sound recording. See also actor-manager system; auteur theory. Directing the art of creating a harmoniously integrated stage or screen production that has a definite artistic unity; such a production may be a dramatic or musical performance, a motion picture, a television film, or a circus or variety performance. The director interprets the play, scenario, opera, or ballet in his own way and thus imparts an aesthetic unity to the work of all those participating in the production. He ascertains the genre, form, and ideological content of the production and is responsible for the production’s rhythm and staging. He strives to make the best use of the performing area and guides the performers in their characterizations. The director of motion pictures and television shows is responsible for composition and montage. Directors organize and coordinate all the components of a production: the acting, stage set, costumes, music, lighting, and sound, and in the cinema the work of the cameraman. Elements of directing have existed in the theater since ancient times, when the playwright or principal actor took responsibility for the unity of a performance. Directing as it is understood today accords the director priority of importance in creating the production, granting only second place to the author of the play or film scenario. This concept of directing first arose in the theater during the second half of the 19th century. The establishment of directing is connected with the activities of the German Meiningen Theater, A. Antoine’s Théâtre Libre in Paris, O. Brahm’s Deutsches Theater in Berlin, and the Independent Theater in London. These theaters were the first to advance the principles of ensemble, which include coordination of the efforts of all the performers, meticulous re-creation of the historical setting and milieu, and staging of realistic and dynamic mass scenes. The directing at the Théâtre Libre, however, was clearly dominated in the late 19th and the early 20th century by a naturalistic tendency, which resulted in a trend to make social problems excessively biological in nature. The founders of the Moscow Art Theater, K. S. Stanislavsky and V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, advanced and fulfilled new and consistently realistic principles of directing. In the Moscow Art Theater, productions were a faithful portrayal of life; such a portrayal resulted from the director’s deep understanding of the playwright’s text. Close contact was maintained with the actors and the stage designer, and the production was permeated with details faithful to the play’s historical and social milieu. Directing at the Moscow Art Theater was marked by great psychological refinement and conveyed authenticity of surroundings, atmosphere, and moods. The actors seemed actually to become the personages they portrayed. The directing at the Moscow Art Theater decisively influenced Russian and foreign directing. The Stanislavsky method, which originated in this theater, when creatively utilized by directors effectively conveys realism in the theater, motion pictures, and television, creating wide perspectives for the director in the most important sphere of his activity—his work with the actors. Early in the 20th century there appeared in directing a trend opposed to the method of the Moscow Art Theater. The trend’s adherents, who were concerned chiefly with the expressiveness of the play’s form, advanced the principle of deliberate artificiality of action, rejecting the idea of creating an illusion of reality on the stage. The directors V. E. Meyerhold in Russia, G. Craig in Great Britain, and M. Reinhardt in Germany, while resolving different stylistic problems, agreed in affirming vividness, beauty, and poeticizing in stage presentations. This trend, which was particularly fruitful in the musical theater, was also applied and developed in the dramatic theater. Such diversity of trends in directing has enriched the development of the director’s art. The emergence of cinematography in the early 20th century opened up new prospects in directing. The first important film director, D. W. Griffith (USA), utilized the possibilities of the screen to re-create historical events on a large scale. The development of directing in the Soviet theater is linked with the work of E. B. Vakhtangov, A. Ia. Tairov, K. A. Mardzhanishvili, A. Akhmeteli, L. Kurbas, G. P. Iura, M. M. Krushel’nitskii, A. D. Popov, A. D. Dikii, R. N. Simonov, N. P. Akimov, M. N. Kedrov, N. P. Okhlopkov, A. M. Lobanov, and Iu. A. Zavadskii. Outstanding directors in the Western European theater have been J. Copeau, L. Jouvet, E. Piscator, B. Brecht, E. Burian, and J. Vilar. Each of these directors originated an independent theatrical trend, and each headed a theater with its own style of performing. Soviet directing, inspired by the ideas of the 1917 October Revolution, strove to create heroic productions national in spirit and militantly tendentious. These productions expressed a new social content in vivid, assertive theatrical form. Affirming the method of socialist realism, Soviet directing has freely synthesized the theatrical concepts of Stanislavsky, Nemirovich-Danchenko, and Meyerhold; during the Soviet period their work found new sources of inspiration and laid the foundation for a Soviet theatrical idiom. Motion-picture directing has also developed intensively. The film directors S. M. Eisenstein, V. I. Pudovkin, A. P. Dovzhenko, N. M. Shengelaia, L. V. Kuleshov, D. Vertov, G. M. Kozintsev, L. Z. Trauberg, F. M. Ermler, the Vasil’ev brothers, M. I. Romm, S. I. Iutkevich, S. A. Gerasimov, I. A. Pyr’ev, M. K. Kalatozov, M. S. Donskoi, and G. V. Aleksandrov have utilized the cinematic art’s new means of expression and their productions have had a strong influence on world cinematography. Soviet film directing was innovative in portraying revolutionary epics on the screen and faithfully depicting the actions of large masses of people; it also realistically portrayed historical and modern heroes, thus demonstrating the limitless possibilities of socialist realism in art. At the same time, such outstanding foreign directors as C. Chaplin, E. von Stroheim, F. Capra, R. Clair, J. Renoir, and O. Welles have developed and enriched the progressive, democratic tendencies of cinematic art, exposing the supposed antihumanitarian character of the capitalist system. Modern directing in both the theater and the cinema is marked by continuing development and enrichment of realistic trends, which have characterized the work of the Soviet stage directors G. A. Tovstonogov, B. I. Ravenskikh, V. N. Pluchek, O. N. Efremov, A. A. Goncharov, F. E. Shishigin, Iu. P. Liubimov, A. V. Efros, V. Kh. Panso, K. K. Ird, Iu. I. Mil’tinis, D. A. Aleksidze, and V. M. Adzhemian. Realism has also dominated the work of the Soviet film directors Iu. A. Raizman, I. E. Kheifits, A. G. Zarkhi, S. F. Bondarchuk, S. I. Rostotskii, V. M. Shukshin, G. N. Chukhrai, E. A. Riazanov, L. A. Kulidzhanov, L. I. Gaidai, M. M. Khutsiev, A. A. Tarkovskii, Iu. N. Ozerov, A. A. Alov and V. N. Naumov, V. P. Zhalakiavichius, O. D. Ioseliani, T. E. Abuladze, E. N. Shengelaia, and G. N. Shengelaia. Soviet directing, while marked by a wealth of creative trends and by individuality of approach, shares ideological goals and a democratism that is determined by the principles of socialist realism. Innovation and ideological growth have also marked the work of directors in other socialist countries, including A. Munk, A. Wajda, and J. Kawalerowicz (Poland); M. Fryč and O. Vávra (Czechoslovakia); and K. Maetzig, S. Dudow, and K. Wolf (German Democratic Republic). Abroad, the work of the most important film directors continues to oppose antidemocratic and antirealistic trends. Examples are found in the work of R. Rossellini, P. Germi, V. De Sica, F. Fellini, M. Antonioni, L. Visconti, F. Rosi, D. Risi, and E. Petri (Italy); I. Bergman (Sweden); S. Kramer, A. Penn, and S. Kubrick (USA); L. Buñuel (France and Mexico); R. Bresson (France); and K. Shindo and A. Kurosawa (Japan). Other examples are found in the work of such stage directors as J.-L. Barrault and R. Planchon (France), G. Strehler (Italy), and P. Brook (Great Britain). REFERENCESStanislavsky, K. S. Sobr. soch., vols. 1-8. Moscow, 1954-61.Nemirovich-Danchenko, V. I. Teatral’noe nasledie, vols. 1-2. Moscow, 1952-54. Vakhtangov, E. Materialy i stat’i. Moscow, 1959. Tairov, A. Ia. O teatre. Moscow, 1970. Meyerhold, V. E. Stat’i, pis’ma, rechi, besedy, parts 1-2. Moscow, 1968. Popov, A. D. Khudozhestvennaia tselostnost’ spektaklia. Moscow, 1959. Sakhnovskii, V. G. Rabota rezhissera. Moscow, 1937. Sakhnovskii, V. G. Mysli o rezhissure. Moscow-Leningrad, 1947. Dikii, A. Stat’i, perepiska, vospominaniia. Moscow, 1967. Zavadskii, Iu. Ob iskusstve teatra. Moscow, 1965. Akimov, N. O teatre. Moscow-Leningrad, 1962. Zakhava, B. Masterstvo aktera i rezhissera. Moscow, 1964. Zakhava, B. Sovremenniki, Vakhtangov, Meierkhol’d. Moscow, 1969. Tovstonogov, G. O professii rezhissera. Moscow, 1965. Tovstonogov, G. Krug myslei. Leningrad, 1972. Mardzhanishvili, Kote. Tvorcheskoe nasledie: pis’ma, vospominaniia, i stat’i o Mardzhanishvili, vols. 1-2. Tbilisi, 1958-66. Markov, P. A. O teatre, vols. 1-2. Moscow, 1974-75. Voprosy rezhissury: Sb. statei rezhisserov sovetskogo teatra. Moscow, 1954. Rezhissura v puti: Sb. Moscow-Leningrad, 1966. Spektakli i gody: Sb. Moscow, 1969. Portrety rezhisserov: Sb., fase. 1. Moscow, 1972. Stroeva, M. Rezhisserskie iskaniia Stanislavskogo. Moscow, 1973. Vilenkin, V. VI. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko. Moscow, 1941. Zograf, N. Vakhtangov. Moscow-Leningrad, 1939. Gorchakov, N. M. Rezhisserskie uroki Vakhtangova. Moscow, 1957. Rudnitskii, K. Rezhisser Meierkhol’d. Moscow, 1969. Golovashchenko, Iu. Rezhisserskoe iskusstvo Tairova. Moscow, 1970. Craig, G. Iskusstvo teatra. St. Petersburg, 1912. Vilar, J. O teatral’noi traditsii. Moscow, 1956. (Translated from French.) Gassner, J. Forma i ideia v sovremennom teatre. Moscow, 1959. (Translated from English.) Brecht, B. O teatre. Moscow, 1960. (Translated from German.) Jouvet, L. Mysli o teatre. Moscow, 1960. (Translated from French.) Barrault, J.-L. Razmyshleniia o teatre. Moscow, 1963. (Translated from French.) Eisenstein, S. Izbrannye proizvedeniia, vols. 1-6. Moscow, 1964-71. Pudovkin, V. Izbrannye stat’i. Moscow, 1955. Dovzhenko, A. Sobr. soch., vols. 1-4. Moscow, 1966-69. Kuleshov, L. Osnovy kinorezhissury. Moscow, 1941. Kuleshov, L. Kadr i montazh. Moscow, 1961. Iutkevich, S. Chelovek na ekrane. Moscow, 1947. Iutkevich, S. Kontrapunkt rezhissera. Moscow, 1960. Kozintsev, G. Glubokii ekran. Moscow, 1971. Kozintsev, G. Prostranstvo tragedii. Moscow, 1973. Romm, M. Besedy o kino. Moscow, 1964. Shklovskii, V. Eizenshtein. Moscow, 1973. Karaganov, A. Vsevolod Pudovkin. Moscow, 1973. Barabash, Iu. Chistoe zoloto pravdy. Moscow, 1963. (Translated from Ukrainian.) Zorkaia, N. Portrety. Moscow, 1966. Bozhovich, V. Sovremennye zapadnye kinorezhissery. Moscow, 1972. Braginskii, A. Rene Kler. Moscow, 1963. Shitova, V. Lukino Viskonti. Moscow, 1965. Sobolev, R. Ezhi Kavaterovich. Moscow, 1965. Nedelin, V. Stenli Kreimer. Moscow, 1970. Bachelis, T. Fellini. Moscow, 1972. Bazin, A. Chto takoe kino? Moscow, 1972. (Translated from French.) K. L. RUDNITSKII Want to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, add the site to iGoogle, or visit the webmaster's page for free fun content. |
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